


Ten

by notjustmom



Series: January 2019 [1]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: M/M, response to a tumblr prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 18:47:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17371370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjustmom/pseuds/notjustmom
Summary: This is more or less an exercise in response to the January Sherlock Challenge prompt, '10', each bit is as many sentences long as the number, and the series essentially described the relationship of Holmes and Watson as found in the two Downey/Law films.





	Ten

1.

One moment, one glance across the room, one smirk and he knew for the first time in his life that he had a heart; and at once, he knew it would all too soon be broken beyond repair. 

 

2.

For a time, it was always the two of them, in different circumstances, one might consider them a couple, more married than most.

If one considered them objectively, it was a rather odd pairing; one existed in a perpetual state of energetic, unkempt scruff, giving him an aura of ageless innocence, while the other seemed to have entered the world as a soldier, even at rest, he managed to give off an air of precise respectability, and yet, one seemed out of place without the other.

 

3.

Three more seconds, and he could have stopped it from happening. He watched him close his eyes, as if his face was the last memory, the last image he wanted to take with him into the swirling, unforgiving noise of water below him. All he could do was close his eyes and hope when he opened them again that he was just in the middle of a horrible, ill-constructed dream.

 

4.

He had known by the look in his eyes, how much pain he was in when he found him in the rubble, and the escape through the forest, or what had once been a forest, had taken its toll on his friend, but he wasn’t going to let him die on a bloody train. Why it mattered so much to him that Holmes not simply fade away in Sim’s arms didn’t occur to him immediately, but as he pounded on his chest, trying to convince one more breath from his friend, he finally understood. 

“I just had a horrible dream, you and Mary and Gladstone and that satanic pony were all at dinner…who has been dancing on my chest!!!?”

“Me.”

 

5.

He had always been on his own, lived in his own world of puzzles, and facts, as Mycroft liked to remind him, usually of the most arcane, and therefore useless, but for him, they were safer than his fellow man. People saw him as odd, difficult, if useful at times, but had little use for him otherwise; he existed on the fringe of society, one of the oddities.

Until the day he met the man who saw him, saw him as more than his utility, and realised he was far more human than most, and stayed in spite of this, what he considered his weakness. He wondered if it was simple curiosity at first, or sheer loneliness that kept him by his side, but slowly came to understand it was far more than that, it was actual friendship. Friendship that after a time became something more.

 

6.

How did they meet? Well, as most people usually do, by chance, he thought, if he ever gave it much thought at all. He didn’t usually, but as he watched his friend and comrade in arms lying too still in the too small bed, he tried to recall the last moment when Watson wasn’t by his side and could not. For the last ten, no, fifteen years of his life, give or take, Watson had been his friend, confidant, and his sole touchstone to what most people would consider reality. Now, he found himself at loose ends, unable to accept a life without the other man.

“Stop pacing, Holmes, I can hear the gears burning from here.”

 

7.

Engaged. Watson was getting married. He had always known it was more than a possibility, it had been an inevitability. Myc had warned him, about becoming too attached, something about caring being a… he smiled away the thought as he met the curiously intelligent gaze of the woman seated directly across from him. He knew better. Watson was fidgeting next to him, hoping against hope that he would refrain, but then she insisted. He glanced over at Watson, who rolled his eyes, and shot him one last pleading look, and then he began.

 

8.

Watson opened his eyes and nearly smiled as he saw Holmes sleeping in the chair next to his bed. It was clear he hadn’t shaved in a few days, or changed his clothing, though that in itself wasn’t outside of the norm for his friend. The surprise came when he realised he wasn’t in hospital, but in his old rooms at Baker Street. Somehow Holmes had convinced the powers that be to move him to the slightly cleaner rooms of his former flatmate, and he gave a brief thought to Mycroft’s involvement, and quickly let it go again.

“Watson.”

“Holmes.” His voice cracked and he wondered how long he had been unconscious, as Holmes hurriedly poured him out a glass of water and held it to his dry, cracked lips.

“A week, Watson, it’s been a week since you opened your eyes last.”

 

9.

There was to be no funeral, no final resting place for his friend. Though it was fitting in a way, he considered with a wry grin. In life he rested rarely save for those instances when injured or ill enough to have little choice. 

There were times, like today, though, when he wished for a quiet place where he could sit and visit, place a token, perhaps, but as he walked through the grey London afternoon, he realised there was no place in the city that did not remind him of his late friend. 

There, in that alley, a rather abrupt ending to a month long case. He turned his head and there was the flower girl he knew Holmes had often visited when he knew he had pushed Mrs. Hudson a bit too far. A few meters further along and the busker who Holmes claimed had a far better understanding of the world and music than he could ever dream of, sat playing a tricky bit of Schubert. As he threw a few coins into the man’s tin cup, the music stalled briefly, and he heard him mumble under his breath, “he ain’t truly gone, ya know.”

Watson looked into the man’s eyes and blinked at him in startled recognition, but only added a few more coins to his cup, tipped his hat and once more merged with the pedestrian traffic, as he made his way through the smog-filled city that he once was fortunate enough to share with his friend.

 

10.

“Afghanistan.”

John H. Watson, late of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers glanced up from the paper he had been perusing, but not really reading, and blinked at the odd-looking younger man who had addressed him.

“Sorry?”

“You’ve recently returned from a sunny climate, as evidenced from the tan line and the way the sun has bleached the hairs on your arms. Clearly of military background, habits of years, hard to break; haircut, and the way you hold yourself, nearly at attention, even as you are supposed to be recuperating.”

“How?”

The man sighed as he fell into the chair across from him uninvited, and picked up the walking stick that laid hard by Watson’s chair. “And you keep rolling your shoulder before you remember - left shoulder, you grimace just slightly and you pick up your tea awkwardly with your less dominant hand, apologies -”

“John Watson.”

“Sherlock Holmes.”


End file.
